A String of Todays

[The Stage is on Fire] is a page-turner in which, much like life, there are no easy answers and yet each step of the journey yields insight and hope. This work of heart must not be missed!

Melanie Faith

Creative Writing Teacher, Essayist & Poet.

Katie Steedly’s first-person piece [The Unspeakable Gift] is a riveting retelling of her participation in a National Institutes of Health study that aided her quest to come to grips with her life of living with a rare genetic disorder. Her writing is superb.

The Society of Professional Journalists

In recognition of receiving the Dateline Award for the Washingtonian Magazine essay, The Unspeakable Gift.

I thank you … It is the authenticity of your “class notes”; and it is the delicacy and skill with which you present the nuances of classroom life and the actuality of your students’ and fellow teachers’ lives.

Maxine Greene

Philosopher and Education Scholar

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If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when? – Hillel the Elder

My Turner syndrome diagnosis at the age of 15 framed my understanding of now. It framed my understanding of why, too. My dreams and plans shifted and changed in that moment. I was forced to think about grown-up things when I wanted to think about getting my driver’s license and who was going with who in school. If having children could not be part of my plan, I would live differently than that. If I might have cognitive and social issues, I would prove that prognosis wrong. My string of todays started that day. I did not talk about the diagnosis. I was too scared. I did not research the diagnosis. I did not want to know. I just remember living differently.

What is my understanding of now and why today?

Now is fierce.

King talked about the fierce urgency of now. Our string of todays starts with right now. Small steps. Inches of growth. Second by second. Starting again and again. Failure by failure. Success by success. That is the challenge. There is a pace to now. The pace of now is the speed of morning. It is the marks on a kitchen wall showing how we grow. It is the constancy of the seasons, the drum beat of soldiers marching, the taste of watermelon in summer, the tide rolling in.

Know your why.

The urgency of now starts with knowing our why. Why we do what we do? Why we care about what we care about? Why we have been given the gift of life? Our why forms our purpose and passion. Our why must guide or days That is where now and why truly come together. When we know our why or now make perfect sense.

https://kitt.global/may-30-a-string-of-todays-mark-nepo-the-book-of-awakening/